Lying Awake.

Moments ago, I was lying awake in my cozy bed. I must confess I am still in bed though now sitting up typing on my computer. Perfectly comfortable surroundings: soft spread, warm sheets, properly placed pillows and myself up-kept: hunger satisfied, thirst quench, bladder relieved proved insufficient to entice a good night's rest. There never seems to be a reason for these restless nights. I'm tired. I want to sleep. And after all these years of attempting sleep and eventually achieving it, one would think I'd gotten better.

How is it that a baby, incapable of pretty much everything, can accomplish continuously what I struggle to do momentarily? As a child, I, like most, resisted bedtime with martial ferocity only to wake up wondering how I had fallen asleep and often eager to resume whatever new fantastical dream. For those of us who appear unable to conquer this seemingly simple task, much of that mystery remains. I still dread bedtime, though now since I know that the fight to sleep is more exhausting than any day at work, and ponder how it could come so easily to others. Since it is so rare and precious to me, the sleep I do manage takes on a near-divine quality, in part by the sheer futility of "trying to sleep". The reality, obvious to any normal human being, is that the more you want to sleep, even by thinking about it, you consequently make it impossible. Few other occasions allow the honest man to say, "If at first you don't succeed, stop trying and then it might happen." It's a reminder that we as people don't really control as much as we may think.

Another key manner in which sleep maintains this near-divine quality is just that it doesn't really make any sense, but still is. Every night I crawl onto a soft padded box, designed for precisely this, pull a few lengths of fabric over my weary body, lie fairly still, and slowly, I drift away into the part of my mind of which I have little handle and ordinarily don't use at all. After a few hours, always fewer than I need, I wake up and resume my life as though nothing had happened. Every once in awhile, I will recall a dream in the morning only to have it thoroughly bemuse me as to how any part of my brain could be so clueless as to think that it made any sense at all and yet so powerful to have me utterly convinced it was real (until, of course, I awake).

The last way in which this whole ridiculous ritual recalls the religious seems too blatant to mention, but I'll humour you anyway. Sleep is eventually undeniable. You may fight it, or fight for it (though in this case there is little difference), but regardless, it must be. We have little command and even less understanding, but it doesn't matter. It happens or doesn't and you can either accept and trust it, or live a miserable and fatigued existence. In many ways, sleep is a beautiful analog for fate, destiny, providence. In other ways, it's not at all an analog, but an aspect. Things to ponder. And now, after about an hour, I must return to it, as a prodigal child, hoping that it will still accept me after I have now squandered part of the night that should have been its.

Good night,
Collins